Presidential Election 2019 -MEDIA COMMUNIQUE 25th October 2019

During the 36
days which have elapsed since the announcement of the presidential election of
Sri Lanka, CMEV has recorded 464 verified incidents of election law violations.
The highest number of incidents have been reported from Western and Southern
provinces. Among those complaints 198 incidents were reported against New
Democratic Front (NDF) and 186 incidents against the Sri Lanka Podujana
Peramuna (SLPP). It is critical to observe that around 16 incidents of violence
including assault and threats have been reported thus far.

The following are
some of the trends that have been observed over the last seven days in relation
to the pre-election period:

Governors of several provinces have been involved in presidential
election campaigns in support of candidates while misusing state resources for
campaigning

Provincial governors
have been involved in campaigning promoting presidential candidates while
serving as the representatives of President and chairing Provincial Public Service
Commission. A.J.M Musammil, Peshala Jayarathna and Hemal Gunasekara, serving as
the governors of Western, North Western and Southern Provinces respectively,
are misusing resources belonging to their respective Provincial Councils to
promote the SLPP candidate.

Incidents relating
to threats and assaults

Particular
attention should be given to the critical situation where numerous politicians
have threatened and used verbal abuse against supporters of opposition parties.
This has occurred especially at the regional level.

Usage of social media during the pre- election period.

It is difficult
to ignore the fact that the authorities of Facebook have not been proactive in
promptly responding to the measures taken by the Election Commission in curbing
the spread of hate speech and disinformation. This is in spite of social media
networks such as Facebook playing a critical role in disseminating information
pertaining to elections. CMEV has closely observed the negative direction
towards which the contributions of social media networks such as Facebook is
headed. This is despite their potential to be immensely instrumental in the
progress of the electoral process of Sri Lanka. CMEV believes that a broader
social discourse must be created around Facebook’s reliance on the community
standards set out by their own institution. Facebook’s inconsistencies in
applying the standards and failure to deal with the language complexities in
Sri Lanka is greatly exacerbating the spread of hate speech and misinformation
during the election. This is crucial particularly in because Sri Lanka is
moving towards a period where several elections are to be held within a close
period.

Accordingly, CMEV
is in the process of compiling a comprehensive report on the role that has been
adopted by social media institutions in light of the upcoming presidential
election. This report will be published by the end of the presidential
election.